User blog:Kittygirl19/An idea.
The Idea *A civilzation emphasing castes/estates/strata of society. Castes are for life, and determine career. *Children don't have parents but sponsors, just as citizens of Rome had their 'pater' sponsors; this is where we got the English word 'patron', and the concept of a child's "godfather." *Strife between the players are symbolically strife between castes. Kids eventually learn not to judge each other based on their heritage / caste, but on individual merit and accomplishments. *The number three over and over again... with a mid-story reveal that what they thought was three is actually four. The magic number for this session is "324". Guardians Prenu have 'patroni' (singular 'patronus'), an adult prenu that invests, sponsors and grooms young prenu to assist and eventually take over their affairs. These young prenu are called 'children', but a more appropriate human translation might be 'apprentice.' Adults do not care for their offspring, seeing infants as offspring of the community as a whole (hatching from exocorpus eggs?). Individual parentage is irrelevant -- what an infant will become is more valued than where an infant came from. Infants are cared for in the hopes they are fit to be sponsored by a high-status patronus. When an infant is adopted by a high-status patronus, it elevates the reputation of the community that infant was raised by, and when the child becomes an adult they are likely to return to their "home" and bring the high-status skills and resources they have inherited from their patronus. Players There will be six players, two from each caste, and Derspit will be used as well. Prospit players will use additive colours: Cyan/Turqoise, Magenta/Spinel, Yellow/Citrine (pyrite?). Derse players will use subtractive colours: Blue/Lapis, Red/Ruby, Green/Malachite. The players aren't 'server and client,' they are 'patronus and child,' which will irritate some, and scandalize some, until they figure out that each player is patronus to one and child to another in a loop, so it's all balanced out. They're all children/apprentices, so legally they cannot be someone else's patronus, but this is just a game of pretend (just as human children playing 'King of the Hill' aren't really royalty). Commitments Prenu Relationships There are three(*) types of committed relationships -- "commitments" for short -- that the prenu may have with each other. Prenu may have the same type of committment to more than one other prenu, but may not have multiple types commitments to the same prenu. Each has an sigil, which coincidentally look like the icons of human playing cards, and troll quadrants. <3 - eros - animal - creation - the desire of two equals to create something together. Sometimes this is a new business venture, a novel innovation, or joining to create a new infants. Infants are appreciated by the community since they replenish each caste, and they are opportunities for the community to indirectly inherit resources from another community. It is considered taboo for an adult prenu to be patronus to an infant in their own community; the equivalent human idea would be 'inbreeding'; trolls have no such taboo. It is not unheard of for a former patronus / apprentice pair to have an eros commitment. This will freak out a troll or human when they discover this could be starting a new business venture together, or making an infant together. Two prenu in a patros committment would never have an eros committment; it's not taboo, it just never happens since eros commitments can only be between equals. It is infrequent that people of different castes will have an eros committment, though they necessarily must be of equal relative status in their respective castes. The castes of the parents do not determine the caste of the infant. N.B.: !!! The prenu who are playing a new game are not engaging in an eros ("erotic") committment; the game was already created before they found it. <> - fratros - mineral - protection - the promise between equals to protect and support each other in common interest. This could be allies in warfare, or a business contract between partners. Committments of fratros do not depend on caste, and may be made between more than two prenu. c3< - patros - plant - cultivation - the voluntary burden of a superiour to train and improve an inferior, and the inferior's promise to obey the superior. This is the relationship between patronus and child. It is possible -- and some think it is ideal -- for the patronus and child to become equals and change the relationship to <> fratros, but some patroni prefer to always have this relationship, and only surrender their affairs to their child upon death. Committments of patros are necessarily in the same caste, and a patronus may have many children, but each child may only have one patronus. (*: there is a fourth relationship, which is only revealed in Act III or Act IV, when the prenu players discover that their society always had a hidden fourth section) <3< - mortos - absence - destruction - the relationship between one who kills/destroys/ends, and the entity that is ended. For some, this commitment means taking on the duties of the prenu that was killed, for some it means taking only the wealth owned by the dead prenu (or salvaging the remains of the destroyed object), and for some it means the commitment to destroy the rest of the dead prenu's affairs (ie. killing all the children studying under that patronus, burning the remains of the destroyed object, censoring any mention of the destroyed idea). A prenu may have a mortos committment to many things, but each committment does not end until the target of their intent is murdered/destroyed/eliminated. Having too many ongoing mortos committments can weigh heavily on someone, sending them into depression, or neurosis. (eg: Older prenu would see right away that the troll Eridan Ampora had a mortos committment to landdwellers, and would point out that making a mortos commitment to the majority of his own species would make him very unwell and eventually drive him insane or suicidal.) Category:Blog posts